In what place of the Iberian Peninsula did they do business with "excellent hams" 2,000 years ago?

Barcelona"Iberia resembles a bull's hide stretched from West to East in length, with the front parts facing East, and from North to South in width. It is approximately six thousand stadia in length; in width, in the widest band, it is about five thousand, although there are places below three thousand, especially in the Pyrenees, which are on the eastern side." These words serve as an introduction to the third book of the seventeen that make up the ambitious Geography of Strabo (c.63 BC–24 AD), focused on exploring the current Iberian Peninsula more than 2,000 years ago. The author delves into its main cities, temples, and rivers, but also into the peoples that inhabited it, among whom were the Astures, the Lusitanians, the Celtiberians, the Cerretani, and the Layetani. What did the ancient Greeks know about us? To what extent have we changed?

Until now unpublished in Catalan, Ibèria has become a small phenomenon since Adesiara released it shortly before Sant Jordi. "At four in the afternoon we had run out of copies at the publishing house's stand –comments Jordi Raventós, its founder–. About thirty flew in a few hours, and we would have sold more, because there were passers-by who expressly asked for it." It is not the first time that Adesiara has managed to attract readers with books written millennia ago: they have done so with the anthologies Saviesa grega arcaica, by Jaume Pòrtulas and Sergi Grau, a new translation of Jaume Pòrtulas and Sergi Grau, a new translation of L'art d'estimar, by Ovid, by Jaume Juan Castelló, and also with the first novel in history, Cal·lírroe, by Chariton of Aphrodisias, translated by Jaume Almirall Sardà.

Rediscovering the land where we live

It was the philologist and professor Xavier Biosca (Manresa, 1960), who debuts as a translator with Ibèria, who has brought to light the volume, which serves to rediscover the land where we live through the erudite gaze of a geographer and writer about whom we do not have much news. "Strabo had been born in Amasia, on the Black Sea coast – Biosca recalls–. He was Greek by birth, but also by training and culture." Even so, the era he lived in was that of the expansion and consolidation of Rome, which during the author's lifetime became an empire, of which Caesar Augustus assumed absolute power from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.

"A treatise like this Geography was intended to be a guide for the politicians of the time, in order to know what the people they wanted to send would find – the translator continues–. Strabo's ambition was to describe all the lands of the ecumene, the inhabited and known world by the Greeks, especially around the Mediterranean." In addition to Iberia, he dealt with places like Italy, the regions of the Alps, Asia Minor, India, Egypt, Libya, and Mauritania. "He wrote about the places and the people who live there, meticulously following authors like Posidonius, Eratosthenes, and Artemidorus. Along with them, he also had Homer as a source of wisdom – he adds–. He even applied some of the names that appear in the Odyssey and the Iliad" as toponyms of Iberia." Strabo worked from erudition, without leaving home. "In this sense, he was a kind of Jules Verne, who lived more than 2,000 years ago," acknowledges Biosca.

From Malaga to the secret of Cerdanya

In the fourth section of Ibèria, Strabo deals with the Mediterranean and the interior of the peninsula. The route starts from Malaca (current Málaga) and goes up through Carthago Nova (Cartagena) and Sagunto until it reaches "the very mouth of the Iber [Ebro], where the colony of Dertosa [Tortosa] is located", writes Strabo. He then proceeds to describe current Catalonia: "Between the delta of the Iber and the peaks of the Pyrenees (...), Tarraco [Tarragona] is the first city, without a port, but built on a bay and provided with many other things in a rather convenient way". Strabo jumps from Tarraco to Emporion [Ampurias]. "The Emporitans are quite skilled at working linen –he states–. They occupy the interior of the country; one part is fertile, but another is an area that produces esparto from a poor-quality rush that grows in a marshy area. They call it the Juncària plain [the name from which La Jonquera derives]".

Xavier Biosca is struck by the fact that the geographer overlooks any mention of Bàrcino [Barcelona]. "It had been founded at least three centuries ago, and Caesar Augustus, of whom Strabo always speaks well, had been there", he explains. Ilerda [Lleida] does appear, and he focuses on a curious story linked to the Ceretani, an Iberian tribe located in present-day Cerdanya. "They produce excellent hams –we read in Ibèria–, which provide these peoples with no small profits". Two thousand years ago, the Ceretani were already doing business trading cured ham. In addition to Strabo, the Ceretan hams are praised by the historian Polybius and the poet Martial.

The translator of Ibèria first heard of Strabo at the classics faculty, but it wasn't until a few years later that the translators Joaquim Gestí and Montserrat FranquesaCarles Riba made in 1929 for the Bernat MetgeRecords de Sòcrates, by Xenophon, with which he won the second-to-last Vila de Martorell-Memorial Montserrat Ros prize. This, unlike Ibèria, by Strabo, could be read in Catalan thanks to the translation that Carles Riba made in 1929 for Bernat Metge.